Module Suitability Review - Survivors Guide to the United Kingdom

Picture taken from DrivethruRPG.com. IP is FFE/GDW

Hello all, it's on to the final GDW-published supplement for 1st Ed. Twilight: 2000, Survivors Guide to the United Kingdom, or SGUK for short, is a controversial book to say the least with UK fans of Twilight: 2000. Many of the UK fans state they got a lot more wrong than right in this book, being an American, I can't really argue one way or the other, so I will simply state that I am just going to review this book as is for miniatures scenario fodder, and let the UK/Commonwealth fans argue whether or not this book added anything to canon. 

I won't be reviewing 3W's effort, City of Angels, by the way. Honestly, I kinda consider it the worst Twilight: 2000 supplement ever written, and it suffers from a lack of basic research, so rather than spark a flame war about that one..we're just gonna skip it entirely. Everyone ok with that?

So, what does SGUK have going for you? Well, from the miniatures standpoint, quite a bit. The UK as posited, is broken up into a lot of little statelets (with HM Government being just one of them) after the country is nuked about the same time as the US, receiving a further wave of strikes again in 1998. Yeah, not fun to be British. This all leads to a patchwork of groups and warlords, with some of the more memorable entries being the Tartan Army (A marauder band that pays...and is run by committee?), the Red Devils (Man U's fanclub got REAL militant), and the Soviet Group of Forces England (SGFE) (Escaped EPWs who just want to go home.) And did we mention the private little war that's going on between the Republic of Ireland and the UDR over Northern Ireland?

But there are more groups out there than one can shake a stick at, and more that are just hinted at...not to mention, HM's Government in the southwestern third of the country wanting to reunify the whole thing (with MI-5 preparing to fight an assassin's war to do so). And the drought, like in America, getting ready to knock the entire thing into a cocked hat..but what about miniatures possibilities?

Skirmish Games

There's a ton of fodder here. Just about anything you could conceive of for a Post-Apoc skirmish could be done with a British guise, just make sure the combatants have a British feel with less ironmongery, more SLRs and shotguns, and perhaps an armed traffic warden or two....A really good online source that you could adapt for ideas is Winter of '79. Some great figure lines in 20mm are Ehliem and Liberation, the latter's a bit hard to come by outside the UK, but their Urban Meltdown range is perfect for this stuff. It's got a lot going for it in terms of ideas and with a bit of adaptation...it could work for Twilight: 2000. But since you also expect some ideas from yours truly:

• A raid by one statelet on another for food, arms, or just about anything would make a good skirmish game. It's pretty straightforward, and would be pretty much the cause of most armed combat in Twilight: 2000 Britain. Most skirmish rules can handle this pretty well. 
• Another game that could be fun is the two patrols from rival factions run into each other and both decide the other isn't going to report back. Again, most skirmish rules can handle this pretty well. 
• Finally, in a bit of fun, you could do a Black Ops game where MI-5 gets the go-ahead to start assassinating warlords. a small team of 4 MI-5 agents sneaking into a warlord's compound, and doing him in in the middle of the night would make for a tense game.

There's a whole host of other ideas one can pull from this book on the Skirmish end.

Larger Games

The trouble with larger games here is the shortage of food and fuel to support the larger games some of the 1:5 rules thrive on. When your army is based around a single, and I mean single AFV with not much ammo, it's difficult to do a good Fistful of TOWs game. That's not to say it's impossible. One game that comes to mind for a medium-sized game, perhaps with a bit of fast play rules like Rapid Fire, or perhaps Battlegroup: NORTHAG (once it is released), would be HM's Government deciding to apply direct military force against a nearby warlord, and using it's hoarded supplies of North Sea oil to do it. It would make for an interesting, if tough game for the defender.

Well, that's it here. Next on the review queue is the East Africa/Kenya Sourcebook, where we look and see how all that African wargaming material that's come out in recent years can be adapted to Twilight: 2000.